Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

None of the booths was occupied, and only two of the stools; sitting side by side midway along the counter were Greg Novak, a long-haired, brittle-featured youth in his early twenties who worked for Joe Garvey and who also operated the village snowplow, and Walt Halliday, owner of the Valley Inn-plump, mild-eyed, wearing black-rimmed glasses which gave him a falsely studious look. Behind the counter were Frank McNeil and his sixteen-year-old son, Larry; the youth, recruited to help out during Soda Grove High School’s Christmas vacation, as he had been during each summer vacation the past few years, was washing dishes in a stainless-steel sink at the far end, and McNeil stood talking to Novak and Halliday. Dressed all in white, like a hospital orderly, the cafe owner was a ruddy complexioned man in his mid-forties, with a blunt face and bristle-cut red hair. In addition, he possessed a sordid sense of humor and a complaining attitude: Coopersmith did not much care for him. But his food was good, his coffee even better than Ellen’s, and he was therefore tolerable for short periods of time.

The three men glanced up as Coopersmith entered and called out greetings. He lifted his hand in acknowledgment, slid onto a stool three away from Halliday. “Coffee, Frank,” he said.

“Sure thing.” McNeil drew a mug from the urn on the back counter, set it before Coopersmith, put a spoon beside it, and immediately went back to stand in front of Novak arid Halliday.

“As I was saying,” he said to them, “Christmas shopping is a pain in the ass.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Halliday said. “I kind of get a boot out of it. How come you’re so down on Christmas, Frank?”

“It’s all a bunch of commercialized bullshit, that’s why.”

“Listen to Scrooge here.”

Novak said, “So what did you find for your wife in Soda Grove, Mr. Halliday?”

“One of those clock radios, the kind that comes on automatically like an alarm in the mornings and plays music instead of ringing a bell in your ear.”

“Sounds like a nice gift.”

“She’ll like it, I think.”

“You’d probably of done better to get the same thing I’m giving my old lady,” McNeil said.

“What would that be?”

Without bothering to lower his voice in deference to the presence of his son, McNeil answered, “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s maybe six, seven inches long and what you call durable, guaranteed not to wear out if you treat it with care. You can use it any time of the year, and the old lady appreciates it more than anything else you can give her. And the best thing about it, it doesn’t cost you a cent.”

“That’s what you think,” Halliday said, smiling.

“Only one problem with a gift like that, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I ain’t figured out how the hell I’m going to wrap it.”

The three men burst out laughing, and Coopersmith sipped his coffee and wondered what had happened to the spirit of Christmas. When he had been young, Yuletide was a time of innocent joy and genuine religious feelings. Now it was as if Christmas had evolved, in no more than half a century, into a kind of wearisome though bearable space-age anachronism: people going through the motions because it was what was expected of them, worshiping mechanically and superficially if they worshiped at all, no longer caring, no longer seeming to understand what it was all about. And so there were dirty jokes and scatological remarks told in all manner of company, and everybody laughed and pretty much agreed that it was just a bunch of commercialized bullshit, can’t wait until it’s over for another year; it made you feel angry and sad and a little ashamed.

McNeil came down to stand in front of Coopersmith, still chuckling, his face red and damp in the too-warm air circulating through the cafe’s suspended unit heater. “Need a warm-up, Lew?”

“No, I don’t think so. Thanks.”

McNeil leaned forward, eyes bright, eyes leering. “Say, Lew, you hear this one? I like to bust a gut laughing first time I heard it, and same goes for Greg and Walt there. There’s this eight-year-old kid, see, and he wakes up about 2 A.M. Christmas morning. So he goes downstairs to see if Santa Claus has come yet, and sure as hell old Santa is there. But what he’s doing, see-”

Coopersmith got abruptly to his feet, put a quarter on the counter, and went out wordlessly into the falling snow.

McNeil blinked after him for a moment and then turned to look imploringly at Novak and Halliday. He said, “Now what in Christ’s name is the matter with him?”

Sacramento

Somebody knocked on the door, the one connecting the office and the interior of the store below.

The fat manager stopped moving, his head turned toward Kubion; the tableau froze again, thick and strained with suddenly heightened tension. There was a second knock, and Kubion thought: If we don’t open up, whoever it is is going to figure something’s wrong. He gestured to Brodie, who was nearest the door.

The guard who had let them in downstairs said in a liquid whisper, “It’s locked, I’ve got the key.”

Brodie stopped, half turning, and Kubion said to the guard, “Get the hell over there, then; watch where you put your hands. When you get the door open, stand back out of the way.”

The guard crossed the office, wetting his lips nervously, taking the key from the pocket of his trousers. Brodie stepped back three paces, up against the wall beyond the door. A third knock sounded, insistent now, and then ceased as the guard fitted his key into the lock. A moment later he pulled the door inward, stepping back away from it.

“What took you so long?” a voice said in mild reproof from the landing outside.

The guard shook his head, not speaking.

A shabbily-dressed, frightened-looking woman came first into the office, clutching a handbag in both hands; behind her was another uniformed security officer, one of the two normally stationed on the floor below. He was saying, “Caught this lady here shoplifting in Household Goods. She had-”

When he saw Kubion and Loxner and the guns they were holding, he frowned and stopped speaking. The guard who had opened the door said stupidly, “It’s a holdup, Ray,” and the floor cop reached automatically and just as stupidly for the gun holstered at his belt.

“Don’t do it!” Kubion yelled at him, and Brodie came away from the wall, trying to get around the shabby woman, trying to keep the operation from blowing. But the guard had committed himself; he got the revolver clear and brought it up. The shabby woman began to scream. Brodie knocked her viciously out of the way, and the cop fired once at Loxner, hitting him in the left arm, making it jerk like a puppet’s; then he swung the gun toward Brodie.

Kubion shot him in the throat.

Blood gouted from the wound, and he made a liquid dying sound and went stumbling backward into the fronting window; the barrel of his back-flung gun and the rear of his head struck the glass, webbing it with hairline cracks. The shabby woman sprawled against one of the desks, screaming like a loon. The manager was on his hands and knees crawling behind another of the desks, and the other employees had thrown themselves to the floor, hands over their heads, the two women moaning in terror. Like ash-gray sculptures, the two office guards stood motionless. The shrieks of the shabby woman and the echoes of the shots and the sudden startled shouts filtering up from the floor below filled the office with nightmarish sound.

There was no time for the money now, the whole thing was blown; they had no choice except to run. Brodie came over to the rear door immediately, went out onto the landing, but Loxner kept on standing by the cubicle with bright beads of sweat pimpling his face and his eyes glazed and staring at the dark-red stain spreading over his khaki uniform sleeve just below the elbow. Kubion shouted at him, “You stupid bastard, move it, move it!” Loxner’s head pulled around, and he made a face like a kid about to cry; but he came shambling forward then, cradling his left arm against his chest. Kubion caught his shoulder and shoved him through the door.